The venture capital firm that manages the Blackberry Partners Fund has been renamed Relay Ventures as part of its announcement of a $150m early-stage mobile fund and deal to invest in US-based messaging company PubNub.
Formerly known as ATP Capital, Relay Ventures will manage the BlackBerry Partners II fund, with investors – called limited partners – from Canada-based Northleaf Capital Partners, Research In Motion (the maker of the Blackberry phone), Corus Entertainment and Thomson Reuters.
Relay manages $800m in total after ATP was formed in 2010 out of the merger of JLA Ventures, Clairmont Capital and $150m BlackBerry Partners Fund I, which was raised in 2008. Clairmont Capital was a vehicle created at the time of the ATP merger when its managers bought out Royal Bank of Canada as the shareholder in RBC Venture Partners to manage its legacy C$250m ($244m) portfolio.
Kevin Talbot, co-managing partner of Relay Ventures, who re-located to California’s Bay Area from Toronto, Canada, in the Autumn to set up an office, said: "This re-branding initiative finally unifies the three brands that we’ve been operating under and the more than $800m in capital that we’ve raised.
"Our new brand brings unity and clarity to our mandate as an early stage venture investor."
Jeff Haynie, co-founder and chief executive of Appcelerator, added: "They are highly differentiated investors and we are pleased to be a part of their 100% mobile portfolio."
In its latest deal, Relay and Silicon Valley’s TiE Angels network have co-led a consortium investing $4.5m in PubNub. The funding comes after PubNub broke a recent milestone of processing more than 100,000 messages per second.